Book Review: Loretta J. Ross’s Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel
If there’s one thing you need to know about how I feel about Loretta J. Ross’s Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel, it’s that I loved it. I heard about the book from Suzanne Hawkes when I took part in her facilitation training earlier this year because it sounded right up my alley.
Published this February, Calling In is billed as part “memoir-manifesto-handbook” that argues the need to call people in more than we call people out if we want to build movement together.
As a bookworm, one of my pet peeves is when a book is a blatant cash grab. It always sucks to find out a person with some following has no love of books or care for writing. I say this here because the thought flickered through my mind this may be one of those books.
However, reading Calling In is literally what I hoped the experience would be like. This book is concisely written, and it was a pleasure to read. Ross deftly balances sharing personal stories (not too long, not too many, clear why it is being told at this specific part of the book) with understanding the call in mindset. Ross also offers practical questions and actions that you can take if you feel like calling someone out or if you are the one being called in.
For anyone that has felt frustrated, at one time or another, by how we eat our own tail calling folks out, or are inherently interested in nonviolent communication, this is a must-read.
I’m already calling it as one of my top reads of 2025!
“I have no interest in respectability politics—no interest in being polite and uncontroversial in the hope of gaining others’ approval. But I am interested in living out my values.”
What I enjoy about Ross’s perspective on cancel culture isn’t that we should stop using calling out as a strategy when public scrutiny can help us reach powerful folks who may be untouchable. Ross emphasizes how call outs should come when there is no other recourse to justice, not to fulfill spiteful squabbles.
“I can refuse to express my pain by passing it on to someone else. I can refuse to grant someone my burden of anger unless I know they deserve it. I want to be precise with my anger.”
So many hot takes on social media is a criticism upon someone, if not a call out. The yoga space is a particularly interesting example of this. I’ve seen yoga friends with no following raked over the coals for leading a small and local beer yoga event with the same vitriol reserved for large athleisure brands who make yoga clothes.
One memorable day online was when the loudest talking heads were taking down the Dalai Lama. That was one of the turning-points of me taking off the rose-tinted glasses of online discourse. The online progressive yoga space was well-intentioned, but it was silly at times, trying very hard to be right.
But in-fighting among progressive spaces with strong social and political values has always occurred. Ross reminisces on how she’d be “repelled” as a young activist by organizations that seemed to spend more time “warring” with each other than finding practical solutions.
The problem isn’t that we’re too sensitive and we should let things go. Hell no. What she’s saying is a much more nuanced, dare I say spiritual, perspective. It’s to know how to have a conversation with someone in a way that is in alignment with your values and your goals for how you want to see the world around you. This requires you to be so attuned with where you are that you can make the right choices in that conversation.
I think it could be easy to misconstrue Ross’s book and flatten it out to: “just be nice”, “treat people how you want to be treated”, or "be the bigger person.”
Common-sense advice is surface-level. It doesn’t invite you to engage with why you are feeling or thinking in this way. It only asks you to put it aside and never bring it up again. It shames you for feeling this way and also makes you feel that there’s no point to even bring it up.
It asks you to prioritize a fake unity.
Ross cares about movement not forgetting the big picture. She is passionate in her plea for unity, but it is not at the expense of betraying how we feel. It is to bring our humanity into it.
“Calling in,” as Ross defines it, “begins with healing our relationships with ourselves and others, which requires radical forgiveness and radical love.”
Forgiveness and love of ourselves and others. She speaks of celebrating our differences in a way that reminds me of Audre Lorde’s amazing essay, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.”
I loved her stories that show the “possibility of” calling in with Prisoners against Rape, the “strategic power” of calling in with the women’s movement, and the “philosophical importance” of calling in with Floyd Cochran and CDR.
I did not know much about Ross before purchasing this book. The chapter on redemption after a call in truly blew my mind. I do not want to say too much because it, in an odd way, was like the best story being saved for last. Best is, perhaps, not the best word, but it is certainly a story that makes you go, ok yeah this is why she has to be the one to write this book.
Calling In is an engaging read that will be relevant whatever your role is in the social justice eco-system. While folks who are in grassroots advocacy or non-profit spaces may resonate and relate to Ross’s work examples on a personal level, this is a great book to learn how to apply calling in wherever you are, whether that’s in a classroom or at the family table.
Written By: Irene Lo